Since his entry into office in January, US President Donald Trump has undertaken a policy after a policy that has shocked the Americans and the world. From the launch of a repression of immigration and by persecuting sympathetic legal residents to the Palestinian people to dismantle diversity and inclusion programs and the aggression of higher education and freedom of expression, Trump has fully adopted extreme right programs. His detractors at home and abroad easily called him fascist.
But fascism is not the ideology of choice for the American president. The fascist movements varied in their approaches political and economic problems, but they have had several elements in common: the good of the nation is higher than the height, and the State plays a global role in society and the economy.
In other words, fascism was an attempt to reformulate the socialist ideal in a strong nationalist framework. And as a historical reaction to communism and liberalism, it remains exiled in the 20th century, in “the age of the extremes”, as the British historian Eric Hobsbawm called.
Trump perhaps uses the language of “America first” in his rhetoric, but he does not really pursue the “good of the nation”. It continues the good of 1%.
Trump and his cheerlers want to go beyond neoliberalism, which maintains that a minimal state is ideal for economic prosperity and establishes hypercapitalism by dissolving all control that the State has on the accumulation of wealth by the extremely rich.
They understand that we live at times when the extraction of the benefit of society is not as easy, so they want to release capitalism from the obstacles of democracy and the requirements of people that their rights – political, social and human – are protected by law and by the State.
The Tech Brosses that Trump surrounded by wrapped this hypercapitalism in technological coverage, saying that technology can solve all misfortunes and unlimited growth – read unlimited profits for the rich – is the only way to progress.
This is clearly described in the writings produced by Marc Andreessen, a billionaire from Silicon Valley, who wrote a Techno-optimistic manifesto A year before the US elections brought Trump in power for the second time. With an almost religious conception of technology and markets, he wrote: “Techno -optimists believe that societies, such as sharks, grow or die. … We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, break – force. … We believe in the agency, individualism.
This point of view combines capitalism without restriction with transhumanism – the belief that humans should use technology to improve their capacities – and an individualistic interpretation of the most fit Charles Darwin survival. It is easy to see that this lively individualistic vision is the opposite of historical fascism, which favors the nation and the community on the individual.
Some may indicate Trump’s pricing policies as proof that he has statistical trends. But if you scrape the surface, you will see that the trade war that the American president is really involved does not consist in “bringing jobs”, “defending national interests” or reverse globalization.
Trump uses prices as a coercive tool to force various countries to negotiate with him. When he announced a 90-day break on certain prices, he himself praised around 75 governments that reach out to his administration. It is much more likely that these bilateral talks will be used to extort concessions that will promote large capital closely associated with the Trump administration rather than defending the rights of American workers and to create the return conditions of manufacturing jobs in the United States.
It is true that Trump attracted the support of postfascist politicians in Europe and uses fascist language and tools, but that is not enough to qualify it as “fascist”. European postfascists, like the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, themselves distant from the fascist conceptions of the state and the economy. Meloni and others have easily adopted “free market” tax reduction policies for the rich and to delange the supply of social security for the poor. Its economic policies differ little from those of Trump.
The American president has fully adopted the xenophobic and racist language recalling fascist rhetoric and launched a vicious campaign against immigrants. He does not only to scare and win marginalized parts of society, but also to divert their growing dissatisfaction towards a racialized “other” rather than the rich class.
This strategy works not only due to growing resentment for liberal elites that the depleted majority has accumulated, but also because the left did not acted.
Left and progressive politicians condemned themselves to repeat the old clichés on the right and on the left, by making tirades on “Trump fascism” and the debates on the Nazi or Romania of his associates. Getting involved in such rhetoric is futile and a waste of time and energy.
Instead, the left should focus on the development of concrete strategies to counter Trump’s popularity and hypercapitalist motivation. This should come back to the root of the problems with which ordinary people are confronted in their lives: jobs, health care, education and ever deeper cynicism on politics. He must not only exhibit Trump for whom he is really – a champion of major interests in capital – but also to provide a solid and realistic alternative.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
